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Full Metal Jacquet

Well Füllkrug, Igor Thiago, and Evanilson were the top scorers for Dortmund, Brugge and Porto respectively. These are proper UCL clubs who regularly make the 2nd round and have appeared in Finals.

They were signed by West Ham, Brentford and Bournemouth, three teams with realistically no chance of earning a CL place. So there is a huge disparity in spending power.

This past window, Crystal Palace spent more than all 20 La Liga clubs combined.
 
Leeds spent 78m in the summer with no outgoings, and another 20m in Jan
Burnley spent 90m in the summer

They just got promoted
 
If championship level clubs can outspend Europa league, even champions League clubs; the systems fucked
 
Leeds did have 9m outgoings in summer and year before had sold 150m(Rutter, Grey, Summerville) worth of talent while championship. Spending power premiership is undisputable but they are still governed by PSL.
 
We often have the discussion on here about why didn't we sign [e.g. van Dijk] before he went to [Southampton] and I always respond that the rationale is that they wouldn't necessarily have got the opportunities to play every week and become the player they are today. We pay more later on but reduce the risk of failure.
This deal turns that rationale on its head and I've got to believe we wouldn't be doing it unless the assessment was that the lad is an exceptional player who is ready for first-team football now and only likely to get better. The Leoni deal can be viewed in a similar light, it's just that the fee wasn't quite as high. For context, Estevao, a year younger (and obviously an attacker) could potentially reach €57m (that deal was done 18 months ago). The price for Jacquet is not that out-of-kilter if he is the shit.
My point is that we often criticise the club for not buying players when they are on an upward trajectory, and now we're trying to rationalise that this is a market-rate deal, that it isn't really a big-money gamble on an unproven player, which it absolutely is. But it's the kind of deal that a lot of us expect to see more of (in fact we probably would have wanted it done 6 months ago for €20m less).
I'm hoping that he is exceptional, because if he isn't this deal will prove the wisdom of waiting and paying more for the finished article.
 
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